Various characteristic data on wheel/rail contact interaction, such as contact forces interacting between wheel and rail, attack angle of wheelset, position of wheel/rail contact point, are very important, because they should provide the dynamics of vehicle and track, and finally affect the maintainability of wheels and rails. The authors have studied new measuring methods on wheel/rail contact characteristics in order to realize more economical, more efficient, and more accurate measuring. In this paper we describe the mechanisms of various new methods for measuring wheel/rail contact characteristics, such as attack angle, lateralormal/tangential forces, etc, from on-board side and track side, and show examples of the characteristics measured by such methods on real commercial lines.
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